Books by Jake Ransohoff
The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe, 2021
A gulf of centuries separates the Byzantine Empire from the academic field of Byzantine studies. ... more A gulf of centuries separates the Byzantine Empire from the academic field of Byzantine studies. This book offers a new approach to the history of Byzantine scholarship, focusing on the attraction that Byzantium held for Early Modern Europeans and challenging the stereotype that they dismissed the Byzantine Empire as an object of contempt.
The authors in this book focus on how and why the Byzantine past was used in Early Modern Europe: to diagnose cultural decline, to excavate the beliefs and practices of early Christians, to defend absolutism or denounce tyranny, and to write strategic ethnography against the Ottomans. By tracing Byzantium’s profound impact on everything from politics to painting, this book shows that the empire and its legacy remained relevant to generations of Western writers, artists, statesmen, and intellectuals as they grappled with the most pressing issues of their day.
Refuting reductive narratives of absence or progress, this book shows how “Byzantium” underwent multiple overlapping and often discordant reinventions before the institutionalization of “Byzantine studies” as an academic discipline. As this book suggests, it was precisely Byzantium’s ambiguity—as both Greek and Roman, ancient and medieval, familiar and foreign—that made it such a vibrant and vital part of the Early Modern European imagination.
The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe, 2021
A gulf of centuries separates the Byzantine Empire from the academic field of Byzantine studies. ... more A gulf of centuries separates the Byzantine Empire from the academic field of Byzantine studies. This book offers a new approach to the history of Byzantine scholarship, focusing on the attraction that Byzantium held for Early Modern Europeans and challenging the stereotype that they dismissed the Byzantine Empire as an object of contempt.
The authors in this book focus on how and why the Byzantine past was used in Early Modern Europe: to diagnose cultural decline, to excavate the beliefs and practices of early Christians, to defend absolutism or denounce tyranny, and to write strategic ethnography against the Ottomans. By tracing Byzantium’s profound impact on everything from politics to painting, this book shows that the empire and its legacy remained relevant to generations of Western writers, artists, statesmen, and intellectuals as they grappled with the most pressing issues of their day.
Refuting reductive narratives of absence or progress, this book shows how “Byzantium” underwent multiple overlapping and often discordant reinventions before the institutionalization of “Byzantine studies” as an academic discipline. As this book suggests, it was precisely Byzantium’s ambiguity—as both Greek and Roman, ancient and medieval, familiar and foreign—that made it such a vibrant and vital part of the Early Modern European imagination.
Articles and chapters by Jake Ransohoff
A Global History of Crime and Punishment in the Medieval Age, 2023
Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?, 2023
Balkanistica, 2017
Ja ke R a n s o h o ff Harvard Univeresity I. "Bulgaria must bring proof of her inalienable right... more Ja ke R a n s o h o ff Harvard Univeresity I. "Bulgaria must bring proof of her inalienable rights over the provinces which she considers to be Bulgarian and, in this manner, gain the moral sanction of the whole world for her unification." 1 In December of 1917, as the First World War raged across Europe, the journalist, ambassador and self-described "son of Macedonia" Dimitur Rizov published an atlas o f Bulgarian history in Berlin.2 Die Bulgaren in ihren historischen, ethnographischen und politischen Grenze, as Rizov called his atlas, contained forty color maps tracing the putative boundaries o f the "Bulgarian nation" from the first migration of the Bulgars south of the Danube (679) to the recent territorial gains of the modem kingdom of Bulgaria (1915). Rizov's main collaborator in this project was Vasil Zlatarski, the renowned medievalist, who prepared nine new maps of medieval Bulgaria specifically for the atlas (nos. 6-14). The ethnographer Anastas Ishirkov contributed two further maps of Bulgaria in the 19th century (nos. 31 and 33), while Rizov himself provided a preface to the atlas in parallel Bulgarian, German, French and English versions.3 This study focuses on one map from Rizov's atlas whose modem agenda continues to shape perceptions of medieval boundaries. Map no. 13 from the Rizov atlas, drawn by Vasil Zlatarski, shows the medieval Asenid (or "Second") Bulgarian kingdom at its territorial apogee around 1230, during the reign of Tsar Ivan Asen II (1218-1241), with frontiers extending from the Danube in the north to the Aegean in the south, and from the Adriatic in the west to the Black Sea and the environs of Constantinople in the east.4Zlatarski's 1917 image of "Bulgaria at the time of Assen II" remains one of the most widely reprinted maps of the pre-modem Balkans, appearing in scholarly monographs, reference works, textbooks and atlases of Byzantine and East European history across several languages.3 It has even achieved popularity as a Bulgarian tourist
H ow did the term Byzantium come to refer Not Just to the caPital city of the eastern empire but ... more H ow did the term Byzantium come to refer Not Just to the caPital city of the eastern empire but to the empire as a whole and, by extension, to its entire population and civilization? The question is not merely lexicographical but conceptual: the rise of "Byzantium" displaced other notions about what the empire was (e.g., Roman, Greek), detached it from previous narratives, and asserted it as a distinct and separate civilization with its own "essence" that could and should be studied by a discrete scholarly discipline. As we know, the Byzantines themselves-rather, the Greek-speaking Romans of the East whom we now call Byzantines-used this term to refer only to their capital city, as an alternative to its legal names, Constantinople and New Rome, and so its inhabitants could be called "Byzantines." They did not use this name to refer to their empire as a whole. "Byzantios" (Βυζάντιος) was just another word for a Constantinopolitan. For example, the twelfth-century canonist Theodore Balsamon called himself "a Constantinopolitan through-and-through" (Κωνσταντινουπολίτης ἀκραιφνέστατος), while the medical writer Meletios (of the middle Byzantine period) illustrated the concept of individual identity by defining himself as "a Byzantiaios (Βυζαντιαῖος), a doctor, short, snub-nosed, the son of Gregorios," and so on. 1 It is commonly believed that the proper noun Byzantium as
Conferences by Jake Ransohoff
A two-day international conference on the development of Byzantine scholarship in early modern Eu... more A two-day international conference on the development of Byzantine scholarship in early modern Europe. The conference will feature a keynote address by Professor Anthony Grafton (Princeton University) and a range of papers on the art historical, historiographical, ethnographic and textual engagement of early modern scholars with the Byzantine past. Free registration and program available at https://inventionofbyzantium.com/
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Books by Jake Ransohoff
The authors in this book focus on how and why the Byzantine past was used in Early Modern Europe: to diagnose cultural decline, to excavate the beliefs and practices of early Christians, to defend absolutism or denounce tyranny, and to write strategic ethnography against the Ottomans. By tracing Byzantium’s profound impact on everything from politics to painting, this book shows that the empire and its legacy remained relevant to generations of Western writers, artists, statesmen, and intellectuals as they grappled with the most pressing issues of their day.
Refuting reductive narratives of absence or progress, this book shows how “Byzantium” underwent multiple overlapping and often discordant reinventions before the institutionalization of “Byzantine studies” as an academic discipline. As this book suggests, it was precisely Byzantium’s ambiguity—as both Greek and Roman, ancient and medieval, familiar and foreign—that made it such a vibrant and vital part of the Early Modern European imagination.
The authors in this book focus on how and why the Byzantine past was used in Early Modern Europe: to diagnose cultural decline, to excavate the beliefs and practices of early Christians, to defend absolutism or denounce tyranny, and to write strategic ethnography against the Ottomans. By tracing Byzantium’s profound impact on everything from politics to painting, this book shows that the empire and its legacy remained relevant to generations of Western writers, artists, statesmen, and intellectuals as they grappled with the most pressing issues of their day.
Refuting reductive narratives of absence or progress, this book shows how “Byzantium” underwent multiple overlapping and often discordant reinventions before the institutionalization of “Byzantine studies” as an academic discipline. As this book suggests, it was precisely Byzantium’s ambiguity—as both Greek and Roman, ancient and medieval, familiar and foreign—that made it such a vibrant and vital part of the Early Modern European imagination.
Articles and chapters by Jake Ransohoff
Conferences by Jake Ransohoff
The authors in this book focus on how and why the Byzantine past was used in Early Modern Europe: to diagnose cultural decline, to excavate the beliefs and practices of early Christians, to defend absolutism or denounce tyranny, and to write strategic ethnography against the Ottomans. By tracing Byzantium’s profound impact on everything from politics to painting, this book shows that the empire and its legacy remained relevant to generations of Western writers, artists, statesmen, and intellectuals as they grappled with the most pressing issues of their day.
Refuting reductive narratives of absence or progress, this book shows how “Byzantium” underwent multiple overlapping and often discordant reinventions before the institutionalization of “Byzantine studies” as an academic discipline. As this book suggests, it was precisely Byzantium’s ambiguity—as both Greek and Roman, ancient and medieval, familiar and foreign—that made it such a vibrant and vital part of the Early Modern European imagination.
The authors in this book focus on how and why the Byzantine past was used in Early Modern Europe: to diagnose cultural decline, to excavate the beliefs and practices of early Christians, to defend absolutism or denounce tyranny, and to write strategic ethnography against the Ottomans. By tracing Byzantium’s profound impact on everything from politics to painting, this book shows that the empire and its legacy remained relevant to generations of Western writers, artists, statesmen, and intellectuals as they grappled with the most pressing issues of their day.
Refuting reductive narratives of absence or progress, this book shows how “Byzantium” underwent multiple overlapping and often discordant reinventions before the institutionalization of “Byzantine studies” as an academic discipline. As this book suggests, it was precisely Byzantium’s ambiguity—as both Greek and Roman, ancient and medieval, familiar and foreign—that made it such a vibrant and vital part of the Early Modern European imagination.